Well, it has been a while, but not so long that I forgot how to write words using letters. I still have that going for me. These last few months have been extremely busy. I've been learning a lot of facts... maybe not a lot in terms of number...but certainly in terms of size...these facts are so big, in fact, that they will not fit into the internet. Dang. "The internet is big," you say? I agree. Well, think bigger. And then double it.
Do that, and then, ask yourself, what could be so important? The answer to that is almost certainly: nothing. There is no single thing too big for the internet. There is nothing the internet doesn't know, nothing too personal for the internet, nothing too private. There is no emotion that the internet has not felt. It knows nudity, without a doubt, and from a brief survey of Facebook pictures, I would estimate that the internet is well acquainted with beer pong and 80's neon dance parties. But beyond that, take a glance at the wide world of myspace pages, especially those of teenagers, not bands, and you will see their loneliness, fear, anger, and isolation as well as their hope and humor. Just imagine all of the emails that people are sending to one another...emails between relatives, friends, colleagues, enemies, responses to classified ads, craigslist postings, as well as all of the emails that we receive from people we don't know offering to help us improve our confidence AND our love life. We can't imagine it. The internet must not only imagine it, but see it, and remember it. It is our infinite sum: unbelievably wretched and beautiful.
This has a number of statistics about internet usage in the last few years. It is incredible what a powerhouse Facebook is:
And for those of you who don't believe me when I say that the internet is big enough for everything, this video is a good starting point for an internet adventure:
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Slow Motion and Up Close
There are few things in the world that I enjoy more than watching water move in slow motion...and if I had to identify something that I did enjoy more, it MIGHT be seeing small things at high magnification. And to that, my friends, I say, "why make me choose? Why can't I have both?" Well, the answer is that I can...WE can:
This is a video of a microfluidics chip...also slow motion liquid at high magnification. So cool.
This is a video of a microfluidics chip...also slow motion liquid at high magnification. So cool.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
A loss of confidence...
Alright. So I'm sorry. But you all have so many better things to do than to read this blog, so I don't feel too bad. I especially don't feel bad because there is a good chance that everything I am about to write is something you all most likely learned when you were in elementary school. I MUST have learned it at one point too, but clearly it didn't stick. This may make you lose any misplaced confidence you may have had in my knowledge of topics related to science, but that is a good thing, because then at least we all know what we are dealing with. In this case, we are dealing with someone (me) who has assumed this role of disseminating information that is only SLIGHTLY more trustworthy than the content of a textbook...if by "textbook" I mean a "Texasbook" .
Like I said: I should have known this, but I didn't.
You have probably seen the moon. If you have seen the moon, you may have noticed that its apparent shape in the night sky changes on a daily basis. If you are a REAL smarty pants you may have even heard words like "waxing" or "waning" or "crescent" or "gibbous." These are good words. Important words. A waxing moon is increasing in size, and a waning moon is decreasing in size. A crescent moon has a concave curve, while a gibbous moon has a convex curve. These are things that people know, for the most part. And many people also understand WHY these shapes occur... but I did not. I'm not too proud to admit it. I always assumed that the phase of the moon, that is the "fullness" of the moon, was simply determined by the shadow of the earth on the moon...but this explanation wasn't satisfying to me because I couldn't figure out how the earth, a spherical object, could cast a shadow on the moon that was anything other than round. How could the shadow of the earth create a gibbous moon, a moon that is more than half full, with a CONCAVE shadow?
It didn't add up. But luckily there are resources on the internet that can explain this phenomenon in a single figure, such as the one presented below from the website www.moonconnection.com.
So really the earth's shadow has nothing to do with it (except in the case of a lunar eclipse)! Half of the moon is always illuminated by the sun...what changes is our perspective on the moon as it orbits the earth!!! The inner circle of moons shows how the moon is ACTUALLY illuminated over the course of a cycle, and the dotted radii in the diagram show our changing perspective over the course of a lunar cycle. This changing perspective is responsible for the shapes we can see in the diagram's outer circle of moons. And finally, finally, finally I understand how it is possible to have a gibbous moon. But I still have much to learn about how to walk on the moon:
Like I said: I should have known this, but I didn't.
You have probably seen the moon. If you have seen the moon, you may have noticed that its apparent shape in the night sky changes on a daily basis. If you are a REAL smarty pants you may have even heard words like "waxing" or "waning" or "crescent" or "gibbous." These are good words. Important words. A waxing moon is increasing in size, and a waning moon is decreasing in size. A crescent moon has a concave curve, while a gibbous moon has a convex curve. These are things that people know, for the most part. And many people also understand WHY these shapes occur... but I did not. I'm not too proud to admit it. I always assumed that the phase of the moon, that is the "fullness" of the moon, was simply determined by the shadow of the earth on the moon...but this explanation wasn't satisfying to me because I couldn't figure out how the earth, a spherical object, could cast a shadow on the moon that was anything other than round. How could the shadow of the earth create a gibbous moon, a moon that is more than half full, with a CONCAVE shadow?
It didn't add up. But luckily there are resources on the internet that can explain this phenomenon in a single figure, such as the one presented below from the website www.moonconnection.com.
So really the earth's shadow has nothing to do with it (except in the case of a lunar eclipse)! Half of the moon is always illuminated by the sun...what changes is our perspective on the moon as it orbits the earth!!! The inner circle of moons shows how the moon is ACTUALLY illuminated over the course of a cycle, and the dotted radii in the diagram show our changing perspective over the course of a lunar cycle. This changing perspective is responsible for the shapes we can see in the diagram's outer circle of moons. And finally, finally, finally I understand how it is possible to have a gibbous moon. But I still have much to learn about how to walk on the moon:
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The Power of Rust
There are certain things in this world that we cannot avoid. Sleep, for example, sleep is something that we do not have the power to resist, no matter how hard we try. Oxidation is another process that occurs constantly...when we eat, we generate energy through oxidation...and that is why we must breathe, because oxygen is required for oxidative metabolism. Oxidation is the loss of electrons, and it is always paired with its closest friend, reduction, the gain of electrons. One molecule must be oxidized in order for another molecule to be reduced. It is rare that I will ever use the word "must"...I don't speak in absolutes. I tend to err on the side of caution and hedge my bets...but not in this case. If one molecule is to lose electrons, those electrons MUST go somewhere, and their only option is to go to another atom.
Metabolic oxidation and reduction reactions are essential for producing high levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a high energy molecule...did I say "a high energy molecule?"...I meant "the high energy molecule." Sorry. ATP is the man (or woman). It is used in most anabolic activities our cells can think of, those processes in which cells build things. "Hmmmm....I think I want to make a protein today," it says. Well, proteins don't just grow on trees, you know. The cell has to pay for the formation of new peptide bonds, energetically speaking. Well, then, you may ask, how does the cell "earn" its ATP? It does this partially through oxidation and reduction. There is a change in energy that occurs when a molecule gives up an electron. Sometimes moving an electron from one atom to another is extremely energetically favorable, which produces energy that can potentially be used in other ways. If losing an electron is energetically favorable AND if the cell is very clever (which it is) it can store that energy in a more useful form, which it ultimately does as ATP. Without oxidative metabolism, it would probably take me about four minutes and one second to jog the last mile of a marathon...and my heart rate might even reach 60 bpm. So yeah, you could say oxidation is pretty important.
Prehistoric cavemen (and women) were notoriously afraid of fire (another oxidation/reduction reaction)? This fear is well-founded because uncontrolled oxidation (and reduction) can be dangerous, not only in the case of fire, but also in the case of rust. Rust is the product of the oxidation of iron. Whereas iron is strong, rust is not. Unfortunately, many structures were built with iron because, in its original state, iron IS sturdy. After years of exposure to water and salt, oxidized iron, rust, replaces the sturdy iron, with a brittle, yet colorful material, which is more visually appealing than it is strong. According to this useful website: corrosioncost.com, rust costs the US about 276 billion dollars per year.
Respect oxidation. It created you, and it will destroy you. And as we have seen above, it is necessary and 100% unavoidable. It is part of aging, part of growing up, and part of life. And while I must now go to sleep, I leave you with a reminder from Neil Young, that rust never does:
Metabolic oxidation and reduction reactions are essential for producing high levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a high energy molecule...did I say "a high energy molecule?"...I meant "the high energy molecule." Sorry. ATP is the man (or woman). It is used in most anabolic activities our cells can think of, those processes in which cells build things. "Hmmmm....I think I want to make a protein today," it says. Well, proteins don't just grow on trees, you know. The cell has to pay for the formation of new peptide bonds, energetically speaking. Well, then, you may ask, how does the cell "earn" its ATP? It does this partially through oxidation and reduction. There is a change in energy that occurs when a molecule gives up an electron. Sometimes moving an electron from one atom to another is extremely energetically favorable, which produces energy that can potentially be used in other ways. If losing an electron is energetically favorable AND if the cell is very clever (which it is) it can store that energy in a more useful form, which it ultimately does as ATP. Without oxidative metabolism, it would probably take me about four minutes and one second to jog the last mile of a marathon...and my heart rate might even reach 60 bpm. So yeah, you could say oxidation is pretty important.
Prehistoric cavemen (and women) were notoriously afraid of fire (another oxidation/reduction reaction)? This fear is well-founded because uncontrolled oxidation (and reduction) can be dangerous, not only in the case of fire, but also in the case of rust. Rust is the product of the oxidation of iron. Whereas iron is strong, rust is not. Unfortunately, many structures were built with iron because, in its original state, iron IS sturdy. After years of exposure to water and salt, oxidized iron, rust, replaces the sturdy iron, with a brittle, yet colorful material, which is more visually appealing than it is strong. According to this useful website: corrosioncost.com, rust costs the US about 276 billion dollars per year.
Respect oxidation. It created you, and it will destroy you. And as we have seen above, it is necessary and 100% unavoidable. It is part of aging, part of growing up, and part of life. And while I must now go to sleep, I leave you with a reminder from Neil Young, that rust never does:
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
A Problem of Inertia
Hello? Has everyone left? I wouldn't blame you if you had...there hasn't been much to see...at least on THIS website. As I was writing that sentence, I imagined what it would be like if, all of a sudden, everyone got bored of the internet, and just decided to do something else. It doesn't really matter what people chose to do instead...the first thing that comes to my mind is to lie down on the ground...preferably a grassy ground, not too damp. Once on the ground, it would be okay to just lie there. If there were a hill around, it would be nice to roll down the hill, but if there were sharp rocks at the bottom of the hill, perhaps it would be best to remain stationary.
The internet has come to occupy a space that does not exist anywhere, really. Just think! If people stopped using the internet, it would feel like a ghost town. The ebay items would sit gathering dust on the shelves of their owners. The music from Myspace pages would go unheard like the dusty old player piano in a saloon. And (many, but certainly not all) facebook and flick'r photos would go unseen...but not un-missed... like a stack of sepia-tinted gelatin prints on the nightstand in a house that was left in a hurry. And then there is Twitter. Nobody will miss Twitter. A significant portion of people's lives exists on the internet. If that portion does not exist ENTIRELY on the internet, then the "real life" version is at least duplicated or represented in some digital form and stored on some server somewhere.
There are two voids that would be palpable if the internet were to stop existing. 1) A functional void...without google and wikipedia, nobody would know anything...especially me. And 2) an emotional void...people depend on websites for happiness to some extent...for example this website makes me VERY happy. I depend on it like I depend on neurotransmitters to tell me I'm okay. (That is an exaggeration, but I don't feel as though I am overstating the fact that people derive great pleasure from many things on the internet...sometimes, but not always at the expense of their pleasure in the real world). I think that is really pretty incredible that something which has no substance has expanded to occupy such an important part of our emotional lives.
I think I might have just described one of John's nightmares. Sorry John. There there, John. I think I also might have described one of the internet's nightmares...don't worry internet...if I'm not here for you...I know that John will be. Sorry John...I don't mean to pick on you...but can you deny your love for this web of knowledge and communication? And finally, I apologize to all of you...any of you... the none of you who may have been emotionally injured as a result of my lack of communication in these past five (!) weeks. You see, from a scientific perspective, this can be explained by a little something I (and everyone else in the world) like to call "inertia." This video, I think nicely captures the relevance of inertia in terms of human behavior:
Finally, this is the force that pushed me into action...it is a nice music video for a song by Pepi Ginsberg. It just looks like fun:
The internet has come to occupy a space that does not exist anywhere, really. Just think! If people stopped using the internet, it would feel like a ghost town. The ebay items would sit gathering dust on the shelves of their owners. The music from Myspace pages would go unheard like the dusty old player piano in a saloon. And (many, but certainly not all) facebook and flick'r photos would go unseen...but not un-missed... like a stack of sepia-tinted gelatin prints on the nightstand in a house that was left in a hurry. And then there is Twitter. Nobody will miss Twitter. A significant portion of people's lives exists on the internet. If that portion does not exist ENTIRELY on the internet, then the "real life" version is at least duplicated or represented in some digital form and stored on some server somewhere.
There are two voids that would be palpable if the internet were to stop existing. 1) A functional void...without google and wikipedia, nobody would know anything...especially me. And 2) an emotional void...people depend on websites for happiness to some extent...for example this website makes me VERY happy. I depend on it like I depend on neurotransmitters to tell me I'm okay. (That is an exaggeration, but I don't feel as though I am overstating the fact that people derive great pleasure from many things on the internet...sometimes, but not always at the expense of their pleasure in the real world). I think that is really pretty incredible that something which has no substance has expanded to occupy such an important part of our emotional lives.
I think I might have just described one of John's nightmares. Sorry John. There there, John. I think I also might have described one of the internet's nightmares...don't worry internet...if I'm not here for you...I know that John will be. Sorry John...I don't mean to pick on you...but can you deny your love for this web of knowledge and communication? And finally, I apologize to all of you...any of you... the none of you who may have been emotionally injured as a result of my lack of communication in these past five (!) weeks. You see, from a scientific perspective, this can be explained by a little something I (and everyone else in the world) like to call "inertia." This video, I think nicely captures the relevance of inertia in terms of human behavior:
Finally, this is the force that pushed me into action...it is a nice music video for a song by Pepi Ginsberg. It just looks like fun:
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
A World Tangled in Wires...
What if...what if I were to tell you that there is a single cable that stretches all the way across the Atlantic Ocean? Would you be impressed? You might not be, if you are one of the few people who knows that the first Transatlantic Telegraph Cable was installed in the late 1850's. On the other hand, you might be even MORE impressed if you ARE one of those people, because that would demonstrate a healthy baseline level of enthusiasm for submarine telecommunications cables (the focus of today's post), which may not necessarily be present in all groups of people.
Again, I know, this topic is very literally "mundane" compared to lofty things such as the heliosphere, but as I hope to show you, submarine telecommunications cables are incredible AND we depend on them. I know for a FACT that my many MANY readers around the world rely on these relatively fragile pieces of cable for their monthly(?) dose of amazement. So now you may be asking, "who gave this crazy-person access to the internet?"...BUT I prefer to imagine that you are REALLY asking this question: "what, exactly, are we going to learn about these cables?" Well, first I will attempt to describe our dependence on ocean-spanning cables, then I will describe the cables themselves, and finally, I will show you how they are installed.
According to Wikipedia, as of 2006, only 1% of international communication overseas was mediated by satellites, and the rest, the rest being 99%, was carried out through undersea cables. Personally, I had always assumed that cell phone calls were carried via satellite...I assumed this because my cell phone is not connected to any wires, but clearly I was wrong. Another, similarly surprising statistic is one that I heard in a NOVA episode entitled "The Spy Factory": 80% of all communications from Asia (cell phone calls and emails but NOT postcards) is carried through fiber optic cables that span the Pacific Ocean and eventually lead to a "nondescript building in San Luis Obispo." Some cables are buried less than 6 feet underground where they come ashore. And the time it takes for a message to cross the Pacific Ocean? About 5 hundredths of a second!
In this map taken from an article in The Guardian, you can see the incredible web of wires that make it possible to rapidly transmit information almost anywhere in the world...except Antarctica. Antarctica is lonely.
Now you might expect that these cables are somewhat vulnerable...and they are. One of the most incredible things to me is that such a large percentage of our communications rely on submarine cables, and yet these lines of communication can be severed by things such as earthquakes, ship anchors and pirates. (!!!)
Because optical fibers themselves are fairly fragile, they are wrapped in a number of protective layers. The final diameter of a fiber optic cable is approximately 2.7 inches, and one meter of cable weighs 10 kilograms. Now, consider the SeaMeWe-3 submarine telecommunications cable, which extends from Norden, Germany to Keoje, South Korea and links 39 countries along the way. This cable is 39,000 kilometers in length, which means that the cable weighs 390,000,000 kilograms or 858,000,000 pounds. And to give you some perspective on this, I bench press about 1,000,000 pounds...so that's pretty heavy.
And finally, it would be my pleasure to share these two resources with you on the laying of submarine cables. The first is a video from the 1930s...so awesome:
And the second is a more recent movie, although the narration is slightly lacking compared to video number 1. It is, however more informative in terms of the actual process of laying the cable in the ground and the benefits of fiber optics as compared to coaxial cables. Notice how the cable is unrolled into the trench that is dug by the underwater plow:
Again, I know, this topic is very literally "mundane" compared to lofty things such as the heliosphere, but as I hope to show you, submarine telecommunications cables are incredible AND we depend on them. I know for a FACT that my many MANY readers around the world rely on these relatively fragile pieces of cable for their monthly(?) dose of amazement. So now you may be asking, "who gave this crazy-person access to the internet?"...BUT I prefer to imagine that you are REALLY asking this question: "what, exactly, are we going to learn about these cables?" Well, first I will attempt to describe our dependence on ocean-spanning cables, then I will describe the cables themselves, and finally, I will show you how they are installed.
According to Wikipedia, as of 2006, only 1% of international communication overseas was mediated by satellites, and the rest, the rest being 99%, was carried out through undersea cables. Personally, I had always assumed that cell phone calls were carried via satellite...I assumed this because my cell phone is not connected to any wires, but clearly I was wrong. Another, similarly surprising statistic is one that I heard in a NOVA episode entitled "The Spy Factory": 80% of all communications from Asia (cell phone calls and emails but NOT postcards) is carried through fiber optic cables that span the Pacific Ocean and eventually lead to a "nondescript building in San Luis Obispo." Some cables are buried less than 6 feet underground where they come ashore. And the time it takes for a message to cross the Pacific Ocean? About 5 hundredths of a second!
In this map taken from an article in The Guardian, you can see the incredible web of wires that make it possible to rapidly transmit information almost anywhere in the world...except Antarctica. Antarctica is lonely.
Now you might expect that these cables are somewhat vulnerable...and they are. One of the most incredible things to me is that such a large percentage of our communications rely on submarine cables, and yet these lines of communication can be severed by things such as earthquakes, ship anchors and pirates. (!!!)
Because optical fibers themselves are fairly fragile, they are wrapped in a number of protective layers. The final diameter of a fiber optic cable is approximately 2.7 inches, and one meter of cable weighs 10 kilograms. Now, consider the SeaMeWe-3 submarine telecommunications cable, which extends from Norden, Germany to Keoje, South Korea and links 39 countries along the way. This cable is 39,000 kilometers in length, which means that the cable weighs 390,000,000 kilograms or 858,000,000 pounds. And to give you some perspective on this, I bench press about 1,000,000 pounds...so that's pretty heavy.
And finally, it would be my pleasure to share these two resources with you on the laying of submarine cables. The first is a video from the 1930s...so awesome:
And the second is a more recent movie, although the narration is slightly lacking compared to video number 1. It is, however more informative in terms of the actual process of laying the cable in the ground and the benefits of fiber optics as compared to coaxial cables. Notice how the cable is unrolled into the trench that is dug by the underwater plow:
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